Archive for June, 2010

A new collection by Portland bizarro fiction writer, Cameron Pierce, is out now. It includes several short stories as well as the novella Drain Angel.

LOST IN CAT BRAIN LAND

Sad stories from a surreal world.

A fascist mustache, the ghost of Franz Kafka, a desert inside a dead cat. Primordial entities mourn the death of their child. The desperate serve tea to mysterious creatures. A hopeless romantic falls in love with a pterodactyl.

From a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles where robotic gargoyles are law, to a blighted suburbia where the elephant god Ganesh seeks revenge on a man and his android wife, Cat Brain Land is a place of domestic despair and nightmare foreboding. Where sirloin steaks enroll in daycare and ex-lovers return as tiny dolls.

Deadite Press, the cult horror imprint of Eraserhead Press, has just released two books by gore legend Edward Lee.

What is really awesome is that I personally came up with the titles for each of these books. I also selected the cover images (both by the great Alan Clark). When Edward Lee submitted these collections, he told Eraserhead Press to go ahead and name them for him. After a couple of days of brainstorming with Rose O’Keefe and Jeff Burk, I pitched the titles “Bullet Through Your Face” and “Brain Cheese Buffet” and everybody liked them.

Check them out:

Bullet Through Your Face

No writer is more extreme, perverted, or gross than Edward Lee. His world is one of psychopathic redneck rapists, sex addicted demons, and semen stealing aliens. Brace yourself, the king of splatterspunk is guaranteed to shock, offend, and make you laugh until you vomit. Bullet Through Your Face collects three novellas demonstrating Lee’s mind-blasting talent.

Ever Nat – One man is forced to endure an unimaginable torment just to stay alive, one night at a time.

The Salt-Diviner – A touching story of one couple and the quadriplegic, homeless fortune teller locked in their basement.

The Refrigerator Full of Sperm – Why are all the men of Luntville falling into comas with their pants down and dicks up?

You’ve seen Cannibal Holocaust. You’ve seen Salo. You’ve seen Nekromantik. You ain’t seen shit!

Zombie prostitutes, religious rapists, horny werewolves, death by vomit, and sexual fetishes scraped off the sidewalk. From sex prisons to mafia torture chambers, hold on tight because you’re about to enter the perverted and twisted mind of Edward Lee. Once you’ve seen what he has to show you – there’s no coming back.

My story “War Pig” will soon appear in the werewolf anthology “Werewolves and Shape Shifters: Encounters with the Beast Within” edited by the one and only John Skipp. This story (about 6,000 words) is the one that I described as a steampunk version of Fight Club with werepigs. Of course, it’s actually more like Death Sport than Fight Club and there’s only one werepig, but there is also a werebear, a were jaguar, werejellyfish, and a werebulldog, among others. It’s personally one of my favorite short stories I’ve written in a long time. I hope to write more like it.

So for the next week I’ll be working on a new book. This one is going to be another over the top parody of B-horror movies, like Apeshit. However, instead of a Friday the 13th type of story, this one is going to be about zombies. I’m not talking Night of the Living Dead zombies. I’m talking RETURN of the Living Dead zombies. I’m talking about brain-eaters with mohawks. Basically, I just want to do something like Apeshit, but this time with zombies.

The premise of this book is: Battle Royale meets Return of the Living Dead.

It’s about a group of people who wake to find themselves in a boarded up building in the middle of the zombie wasteland. They soon realize they have been chosen as contestants in a popular game show called Zombie Survival. Each contestant is given a backpack of supplies and a unique weapon. Their goal: be the first to make it through the zombie-plagued city to the pick-up zone alive. Some will choose to work together, some will go solo, some will turn on the other contestants to make sure they make it to the helicopter first.

Or something like that . . . (I haven’t written it yet, so we’ll see how it goes)

I’m really excited about this one. I have always been a huge zombie fan. Many of my earlier books have zombies in them, but none of them were real zombie books. For years I decided not to write a zombie book because there were just way too many zombie books out there already. However, I don’t give a crap anymore. I just want to write one. Besides, I promise this zombie book will be one of a kind.

Eraserhead Press has a few zombie books coming out this year. All of them are excellent zombie comedies that I highly recommend. More info on that later.

Pages

"Carlton Mellick III has the craziest book titles... and the kinkiest fans!"

—Christopher Moore

"Carlton Mellick III is one of bizarro fiction's most talented practitioners, a virtuoso of the surreal, science fictional tale."

—Cory Doctorow

CARLTON MELLICK III is the Wonderland Book Award-winning author of over 45 novels, including Quicksand House, Bio Melt, Cuddly Holocaust and Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland. In 2013, he was named one of the top 20 science-fiction writers under the age of 40 by The Guardian UK. His work has appeared in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Best Bizarro Fiction of the Decade, and Vice Magazine.

Featured Titles

The Terrible Thing That HappensIn a post-apocalypse world, a small community of scavengers must survive by looting a grocery store that's stuck in a time loop.Dark and surreal.

The Tick PeopleIn a city where people live like parasites on the back of a giant animal, a professional sadness-maker discovers that his soul mate is a hideous mutant.Dark and surreal.

Hungry BugIn a world where magic exists, spell-casting has become a serious addiction. Gritty and pulpy.

ClusterfuckA bunch of douchebag frat boys get trapped in a cave with subterranean cannibal mutants and try to survive not by using their wits but by following the bro code. Comical and violent.

Quicksand HouseTwo children who have never met their parents before, even though they live in the same house with them, must fight for survival once their nursery becomes uninhabitable. Dark and Dystopian.

Village of the MermaidsAn eccentric doctor travels to an isolated village of carnivorous mermaids to investigate a new disease spreading through the herd of human livestock. Dark and Dystopian.

Cuddly HolocaustA tale of survival set in a world where most of the human race has been exterminated by vicious stuffed animals.Apocalyptic and brutal.

The Morbidly Obese NinjaA 700 pound killing machine must go against his corporate employers in order to save a terminal child. Pulpy and fun.

Crab TownA bizarre bank heist set in a radioactive post-nuke ghetto.Dystopian and relevant.

Zombies and ShitIt's Battle Royale meets Return of the Living dead in a fight to the death game of survival where twenty contestants are put against each other in the middle of the zombie wasteland. Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.

Warrior Wolf Women of the WastelandA Wonderland Book Award-winning novel about a three-armed man who finds himself in the middle of a war between a gang of road warrior werewolves and mutants from a dystopian version of McDonaldland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.

The Cannibals of CandylandA man finds himself imprisoned in an under ground world populated by child-eating mutants made of candy. Erotic and horrific.

ApeshitA parody of cabin in the woods horror stories where the victims turn out to be far more deranged than the mutant killers who hunt them.
Campy and fucked up.

The Egg ManIt is a survival of the fittest world where humans reproduce like insects, children are the property of corporations, and having a ten-foot tall brain is a grotesque sexual fetish.Dark, dystopian, and ugly.

Cybernetrix
A dark and bizarre parody of the movie Tron where a game world and our world bleed together into one reality. Pulpy and awesome.

The Faggiest VampireA bizarro children's book about two vampire rivals competing in a mustache contest to determine which one is the faggiest. Cute and relevant.

The Ultra FuckersA landscaper and a trio of Japanese punks find themselves stranded in a suburban gated community that seems to go on forever. Nightmarish and absurd.

Adolf in WonderlandNazis from an alternate world of absolute perfection go down the rabbit hole into a dark surreal world of chaos and imperfection.Absurd and horrific.

Bizarro Starter Kits

Praise for Carlton Mellick III

"If you like satires which are highly imaginative, subversive, gory, funny as hell and completely surreal CM3 may be your literary messiah."

—Ricardo Gonzalez Del Valle

"CM3 is the most imaginative writer since Lethem and Vonnegut. Different, and absolutely thought provoking..."

—Daniel McCreary

"Carlton Mellick creates fascinating and intricate worlds out of meat, slime, sexuality, wire, and the kind of nightmares that make you laugh when you wake up."

—Jemiah Jefferson

"Brilliant writing that oozes into your skull and melts your brain like a box of a zillion crayons."

—Idiot Alien Thought Creature

"His books are from another universe."

—Cameron Pierce

"Mellick is smarter than the dumbness he tries to coat his writing in; you feel like you're reading a comic or watching MTV - but that underneath there is something deeper and smarter than the cartoonish presentation before your eyes."

—Euchrid

"Through childlike narration Mr. Mellick can present to his reader some of the most curious and knee-slapingly hysterical blaspheme."

—Ian David McGowen

"There is depth behind his simplistic prose, and humor all around it. What at first seems unsophisticated quickly becomes a firm identity to the characters, and you realize the intelligence behind the naivety. Yes, it's all on purpose, and you've just been had!"

—Schtinky

"Mellick has definitely joined the ranks of the bizarre literary geniuses such as Burroughs, Philip K. Dick, and Vonnegut."

—Charles Glover

"Mellick's imagination is boundless, and his writing truly shows this. His characters, plot, and writing style are original, enjoyable, and inspiring."

My new book “The Terrible Thing That Happens” is now available. THE TERRIBLE THING THAT HAPPENS “A new spin on the post-apocalypse genre. One you won’t soon forget.” –Garrett Cook, author of A God of Hungry Walls There is a grocery store. The last grocery store in the world. It stands alone in the middle […]

15 years ago, my first novel SATAN BURGER was published. When it came out I really didn’t expect it to do well. I wrote it for fun, just for myself, not expecting anyone would ever even read it. I mean it’s basically just about a group of 20-year-olds who get jobs working at a Satan-themed […]

My new book, “Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes,” is now available. EVERY TIME WE MEET AT THE DAIRY QUEEN, YOUR WHOLE FUCKING FACE EXPLODES Ethan is in love with the weird girl in school. The one with the twitchy eyes and spiders in her hair. The one […]

My 48th book, BIO MELT, is now available. This is one of the longer and darker novels I’ve written, along the lines of Tumor Fruit, Zombies and Shit, and Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland. I hope you check it out. BIO MELT Nobody goes into the Wire District anymore. The place is an industrial […]

Here’s a complete list of Italian editions of my books published through Vaporteppa Publishing. They include: Cannibals of Candyland, Armadillo Fists, Cuddly Holocaust, The Handsome Squirm, Village of the Mermaids, Kill Ball, The Haunted Vagina, The Morbidly Obese Ninja and War Slut.

My new book, CLOWNFELLAS, is now available from Random House Hydra. I had a blast writing this book. I hope you check it out. CLOWNFELLAS In a topsy-turvy world where clowns are killers and crooks, Little Bigtop is a three-ring circus of crime, and no syndicate is more dangerous than the Bozo family. From the […]

My new serial killer book, As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face, is now available. I hope you check it out. AS SHE STABBED ME GENTLY IN THE FACE Oksana Maslovskiy is an award-winning artist, an internationally adored fashion model, and one of the most infamous serial killers this country has ever known. She […]

My new book, Sweet Story, is now available. Although it’s on the short side, it’s one of my favorite things I’ve written this year. I hope you check it out. SWEET STORY Sally is an odd little girl. It’s not because she dresses as if she’s from the Edwardian era or spends most of her […]

I’m happy to announce that my 44th book is now available. Unlike my last few books, this is a short quick read and somewhat similar in tone to my early bizarro novellas like Teeth and Tongue Landscape, Steel Breakfast Era or Ugly Heaven. I hope you check it out. THE TICK PEOPLE They call it […]